Purdue University, Rotary take on global challenges

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University, the Rotary Club of Lafayette, and Rotary International are partnering to take on a global challenge that kills 5 million people per year. The Rotary organizations will finance the construction and installation of water treatment systems for three schools in the Dominican Republic.

Rotary is dedicated to “serving others, the advancement of community and international goodwill,” and supports thousands of projects worldwide to help developing communities. The Rotary Club of Lafayette and the Rotary Club Santiago Monumental (Santiago, Dominican Republic) were awarded a grant to aid in the construction of water treatment systems for schools in three different communities in the Dominican Republic, including Los Peladeros, El Mamey and La Torre. A Purdue team will work with the Rotary clubs and target communities to design, build and implement these systems. The project will likely begin in August 2017 and is set to take place over three years.

Designed by both faculty and students from the university’s engineering, agriculture and science colleges, the treatment systems will collect water from the schools’ rooftops. It will then be purified by filtering through multiple barriers including sand filters, hollow fiber membranes and chlorine. This will improve the overall quality of life for those in the communities.

The systems will not only involve water treatment hardware, but public health education, formation of a local leadership group in each affected community and development of a relevant business/economic model as well.

“We have assembled the interdisciplinary expertise that we think is required to develop sustainable, holistic solutions to the problems of lack of access to safe, affordable water among impoverished communities,” said the system’s lead engineer, Ernest ‘Chip’ R. Blatchley III, a professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering. “Our geographic focus for the foreseeable future is in the Dominican Republic, but we believe that the approach we have developed can be generalized to many other developing countries.”

With Purdue’s construction and installation of sustainable water treatment systems and funding from the grant, the three schools will be provided with purified water to decrease waterborne illnesses, the number of people with unsanitary water and promote healthy hygiene habits. 

Writer: Torrie Ward, ward121@purdue.edu  

Sources: Ernest R. Blatchley III, 765-494-0316, blatch@purdue.edu

Marti Gutwein, 219-819-2001, martigutwein@gmail.com